Wow: STEALER Does Cyberpunk In Utterly Gorgeous Style

Share this:

Here at RPS, we prize substance over style and constantly lobby for transparency, truthfulness, and open communication between game creators and fans. So, on one hand, I am VERY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, YOUNG MANWINGED DOOM for hardly saying anything about what your game entails. But goodness, the stoic Russian cybergod has created something of such profound pixelated beauty that I’d explode if I didn’t show it to all of you. So here’s STEALER. It’s jaw-droppingly pretty. I have gone to the dark side of videogame blog posting, and I hate myself now.

Apparently, STEALER used to be a “100 percent clone” of Flashback, but now it’s evolved into an entirely different creature. Winged Doom claims it’s “something like Sokoban, but platformer, with focusing on atmosphere and exploration.” Admittedly, that sounds quite excellent, but we have so little to go on gameplay-wise at this point that I’m naturally skeptical.

A sparse ModDB page and a TIGSource thread with only a vague promise of “I will answer to all of you guys, but a little later,” meanwhile, do little to dispel heaps of lingering questions. For instance, do we get to fly ships and whatnot, or is platforming the only thing we do when we’re in control? And how exactly, exactly, is it like Sokoban? Based on what we’ve seen, it doesn’t look particularly puzzle-y to me.

But jeez, STEALER’s is a world I really, really, really want to explore. I mean, just look at it. What an impressive thing. And the music’s not half-bad, either.

Also highly recommended would be Perturbator and much of the the Aphasia Records output. Atmospheric, synth-pop soundtracks to 80’s films that never were; complete with retro-vision album covers. Also featured on the Hotline Miami soundtrack.

80’s nostalgia is pretty big within electronic music right now. Which is kinda weird since the artists are usually too young to have even experienced the 80s.

This is probably not exactly what you’re looking for, but here’s one of my musical highlights from last year:link to youtube.com
It mixes the Vangelis Bladerunner sound with Juke/Footwork chopped n’ screwed beats.

Yeah, its pretty much compilation of all GIFs he made over whole developing time. There were some screens of tile editor, but actual gameplay and actual engine never appeared on public. Also, he is working on a second game now, Journey to Hammerdale, which is sokoban with zeldaesque graphics, so Ill be most pessistic about perspective of seeing it in playable any near time.
Oh, and NEStealer, NES version, which he also announced. And he want to make JoH also on UE3.

Looking at the linked blog, it appears that he has a number of games in “development” with little to nothing to show for it beyond some pixel concept art. That’s disappointing, because the art style certainly shows promise, but it doesn’t look like I should hold my breath until this comes out, much less until this actually exists beyond a Platonic ideal.

That is amazing. I’m been trying to do something with this kind of art style with a group of artists.
Sadly, they’re pretty lazy artists.. Be them insanely talented. HA. This is definitively great inspiration.
Going to have to show them this to hopefully do so and get them working on things a bit more consistently. Lovely song that was also.

I have also been trying to make a game (my first ever) with this kind of art style, however this utterly sh*ts on my attempts.
I will now be giving up on making my game, but will probably continue sketching out the music (tangerine dream meets kuedo).

Thanks Kaen I genuinely really appreciate the support, but as well as someone doing my intended art style 1000x better than me, I just don’t have the spare time to make it anywhere as good as I would be happy with (full-time product designer with a baby on the way).

Spelunky, Enviro-Bear 2010, Probability Zero, Hammerfight, Cortex Command. Literally just off the top of my head, and just games that actually have a for-sale 1.0 version. There’s plenty more, look around.

Seconding this. The dude does visually stunning, high-end cyberpunk comics. Lots of stuff like dyson spheres, self-replicating megastructures, n’thtieth generation cyborg hybrid species and so on. BLAME is almost silent for a lot of chapters, while Biomega plot-dumps all over the place. Both are pretty hard to keep up with at times.

I was feeling Nihei when watching as well. I stopped reading Biomega after a bit (scanlations were slow, plot was obtuse) but I love his style, and BLAME is a joy to go through. OT, but EDEN by Hiroki Endo is a great SF manga series as well.

Don’t count on it… I recently got Another World on sale for my iPhone for just the same reason, and while I’m a few screens further in, I’m now as thoroughly stuck as I was in my childhood. I can’t believe I still can’t get through a twenty year old game!

I keep hearing the word Cyberpunk, and I have a nagging feeling that it’s a trendy word being applied to anything remotely science-fiction, much like I’ve seen “dubstep” applied to everything from The Prodigy to Tiesto. So, for the record, WHAT IS Cyberpunk, and is Cyberpunk not?

Imagine what art would be like after reading Neuromancer for 28 years. That is cyberpunk. At least, that’s what it is right now.
Most folks these days are riding third-wave post-cyberpunk, a phrase I didn’t make up at all.

Cyberpunk describes a life lived in a kind of fucked-up downspiralling near-future in which you’re essentially trying to survive in the spaces between a corporate oligarchy and an ever-expanding underclass. Blade Runner’s aesthetic captured it nicely: it’s the gleaming spires towering ever higher, and ever deeper gutters and meaner streets and darker alleys between them; the first-to-third-world axis expressed vertically. It’s people hustling to get by in the shadow of gods and monsters who see them as insects. It’s basically three weeks in the future.

holy fuck, this is beautiful. in fact, i dont think i have been wowed to that extent by anything attempting to merely push the boundaries of how many polygons and shaders you can throw on screen at once.

shows how you cant buy good art direction with sheer processing power. please have everyone build something good-looking in 2d with sprites before giving them access to top of the line hardware -.-

I think there is a tendency among some video game journalist to over react in front of retro style graphics. For example I enjoyed Hot Line Miami but I found the orgasmic reaction to it’s 8-bit or 16-bit or whatever graphic style absolutely blown off of proportions.

Yeah, the music here, is pretty amazing, got that Indie old gammy techno feel about it, and that aesthetic is gorgeous, I love the tron, bladerunner mix with space, cyber hack… I don’t know, I second the guy above, Samurai Jack. Need more gameplay before I’m sold on it thought, but the trailer is freakin awesome lol (I want the soundtrack)